Cyber Bullying and Trolling

Cyberbullying and Trolling has been an issue for the Twitterati at times. In a recent study by The Guardian, it was found that eight of ten most abused writers were women. These numbers are disgraceful, because it seems like the patriarchal notions against women have now entered the seemingly neutral cyber spaces.

Recently, in line with increasing cases of trolling and cyber crime, Union minister Maneka Gandhi has decided to take concrete action against these cases. The Women and Child Development minister has decided to take up the matter with Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and ministry of Information Technology to come up with a mechanism to tackle and punish such miscreants.

But there are safety mechanisms made available by Twitter to protect its users from issues like trolling, abusing etc. In our session on safety tools, we talk about features like blocking, reporting, mute etc. along with the appropriate actions that the users must take in different situations.

Women and Social Media

The online space is severely underrepresented by women, and cases such as these will only serve to discourage women from making their opinions public.

There is a rising graph of issues concerning with safety and security that women face online, the most common of which are- stalking, cyber crime, voyeurism, morphing of pictures. It’s important for women to know how to deal such problems.

Besides safety and security provisions that the portal has to offer, one also needs to put some efforts in making themselves safe, like;

1. Trusting one's instinct: what one feels from inside plays a critical role in your safety. If you feel something’s wrong, go ahead in taking an action against it (block, delete, mute, abort) without reasoning it to anyone.
2. If you are exploited (god forbid), it isn’t your fault. Step ahead; make a report against the suspected exploiter.
3. Always remember, your safety is also your concern. Make sure you don’t interact with people you don’t know.
4. Refrain from exchanging personal information on public platforms.
5. Periodically one must review their online activities to prune out people who you no longer have any connections with.